Upcoming changes to bringing employment law claims: What these mean for you

Time limits for bringing an Employment Tribunal claim

The highly anticipated Employment Rights Bill (ERB) is set to increase the time limits in which employees can bring an employment tribunal claim.

What is the current position?

Currently, employees have three months less one day from the date of the act complained of to bring most claims. For example, if you were unfairly dismissed, the time limit begins on the ‘effective date of termination’ (generally either the last day of your notice period or the date you were dismissed without notice), and ends three months less a day from this date.

What is changing?

The ERB is set to increase the time limit on bringing a claim from three months less a day for most claims, to six months. This change is proposed to come into action next year.

Time frame for Acas Early Conciliation

What is Acas Early Conciliation?

As it stands, before a claimant can issue a claim in the Employment Tribunal, they must notify Acas (the public body that deal with employment claims and issues), and commence Early Conciliation (EC). EC is the process whereby an Acas conciliator helps the parties to try and reach a legal agreement with a view to avoiding the claim proceeding to the Employment Tribunal, which is costly, stressful and is currently experiencing a significant backlog of claims.

What is the current position?

Starting the EC process currently pauses the time limit for issuing a claim for up to 6 weeks. If an agreement is reached, then the claim ends here; however, if parties fail to reach an agreement, Acas will issue a certificate that allows the parties to proceed to Tribunal.

Due to the current strain on the Acas EC process, under the current 6-week provision, it is frequently taking Acas around five of the six weeks to assign a conciliator to cases, meaning that parties have only one week to conciliate.

What is changing?

From 1 December 2025, the current EC period of 6 weeks will be extended to 12 weeks for claims where EC is commenced on or after 1 December 2025.

Any claims in progress before this date will continue under the 6-week period.

What do these changes mean for you?

The extension of the EC period means that parties will have more time to try to resolve matters outside of court through negotiations.

For employees, they will of course have longer to bring a claim, affording them more protection against wrongdoing during the course of their employment, and longer to prepare and issue their claims against employers.

Of course, this means that employers will have significantly longer exposure to potential claims, and in light of this, will need to ensure that they keep detailed and accurate records of employment.

The combination of these changes will mean that in some cases, employers will be unaware of potential claims for nine months- and if there continues to be delays with ACAS, even longer.

The extension of the EC period seems to be an attempt by the government to alleviate some of the strain on Acas in recognition of just how overwhelmed the system currently is. However, given that the time limit for bringing claims is also to be extended, it would seem delays in the overall process are likely to continue.

Ultimately, these changes are likely to lead to an increase in claims brought, and in turn increase the amount of claims proceeding to Tribunal, adding to the already overstretched Tribunal case load, resulting in longer wait times for hearings (which are already currently being listed for two years’ time onwards).

Our Employment Team

As always, our Employment Team is on hand to assist with any employment queries, so please do get in touch and we will be happy to advise you.

We appreciate that the proposed changes of the ERB can feel overwhelming, and so Leathes Prior are proud to share our approach to the Employment Rights Bill.

Our newly announced approach is to provide our clients with each piece of the law as they need it, in ‘Little Pieces’, rather than in one big chunk. If you would like to sign up to our mailing list and receive these ‘Little Pieces’, please contact edisney@leathesprior.co.uk.